by John Marco
None of them knew precisely what they would find in Ackle-Nye, but they hoped it would be freedom and a willingness to take them into the Empire. They would be outcasts there, too, of course, but they would be free of Drol tyranny. For Dyana, Nar might mean a new life. Perhaps in Nar she could fulfill her father’s dreams and become a woman with dignity, and not a lapdog of the kind she so despised, the type of woman a Drol society demanded. In Nar, she could choose her own husband, and not be sold to a man. She hoped that not all Narens were like Kalak and his murderers.
The noon sun beat down on her uncovered head, and as she trudged along she considered this again, letting her imagination ease the drudgery of the endless trek. These days, her thoughts often turned to Nar and the marvels she might find there. Her father had told her that the Empire was a vast and powerful place, with machines and high buildings made of sweeping stonework. He had said that in the Black City there was a palace as beautiful as Falindar itself, and that Emperor Arkus sat in that palace upon a throne of iron and ruled his many kingdoms with wisdom.
Dyana laughed lightly as she recalled this memory and her father’s bright face. He had never even been to Nar. He was one of the richest men in Tatterak, but he had never once purchased passage through the Run. Too busy, he always used to claim. Busy raising a family and caring for a wife who betrayed him. Busy helping the Daegog deal with the Naren representatives who poured in from the Black City. Too busy for himself. Dyana’s smile evaporated. She missed him, and sometimes the pain of it was unendurable. Worse, she still heard his screams at night, and when she dreamed of him her visions always ended the same way – with his severed head looking up at her vacantly, and Tharn standing over his decapitated body. Years had passed, but the memory was still vivid. That vision would haunt her forever, she knew, and she was resigned to such nightmares. Just as she was resigned to her solitude.
They went on like this for hours more, silently plodding along, until at last the sun began to dip and Falger called a halt. Gratefully they all dropped down at the riverbank and took their fill of the fresh water, careful that all their skins were filled in case of emergency. According to Falger, the Sheaze would take them straight to Ackle-Nye, but none of them had ever been to the infamous city of beggars and so they took no chances with their water supply. Food, however, was another problem entirely. What little they had taken was dwindling fast, and they collected what they could from the brush and forests, gathering nuts and berries and any wild roots they were lucky enough to find. Falger was in charge of rationing the food, and each time they rested he doled out a meager allowance of bread, barely enough to keep the children from crying. Since Tharn had started burning the croplands, food was scarce nearly everywhere in Lucel-Lor. It was just one more of the Drol leader’s obscenities, one more brutality he performed in heaven’s name.
Exhausted, Dyana collapsed at the riverside and pulled off her doeskin boots, dipping her burning feet in the blessedly cool water of the Sheaze. She let out a sigh of pleasure at the sensation, letting her eyelids droop. Around her the men started making camp, going off into the brush to gather firewood and spreading out blankets to sleep on, while the women fussed over the restless children, who splashed happily into the river to play. Dyana smiled as she watched them. There were six boys and three girls. She noticed the way they played together. At this age, they were still equal. The girls had yet to know the sting of male domination, and the boys could still see their playmates as more than just objects. Too bad they would grow up.
‘Dyana?’
She looked up to see Falger hovering over her, a small chunk of bread in his hands. She smiled up at him gratefully.
‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the food. She tore off a small wedge and began to eat, slowly so that it would last. The taste of it was wonderful. Falger remained above her, staring down at her with his peculiar grin.
‘Can I join you?’ he asked.
Dyana chuckled. ‘You do not need to ask that, Falger. Sit.’ She patted the ground beside her, urging him down.
Falger dropped to the earth and stretched, letting the muscles in his neck pop and yawning like a lion. He had no food for himself, just a blade of grass between his teeth.
‘You are not eating?’ asked Dyana.
Falger shook his head. ‘I thought I would wait until the morning, let the children have some more.’
Dyana looked down guiltily at her meager portion.
‘Eat,’ Falger urged. ‘I am not trying to be a hero. I just want there to be enough. Who knows what we will find when we get to Ackle-Nye?’
‘There will be food there,’ said Dyana. ‘Will there not?’
‘Hopefully. From what I have heard there are many like us, Dyana. And the Narens are not doing so well themselves, remember. We may need to conserve what we have.’
What they had was ridiculously little, and would barely last them all the way to Ackle-Nye. Dyana bit into her bread pensively. How could she make such a smattering last?
‘You did not come to talk to me today,’ said Falger. ‘I missed you.’
‘I was thinking,’ said Dyana.
‘About what?’
Dyana shrugged. ‘About everything. About Ackle-Nye, and Nar. I was thinking about what it will be like there.’
‘Hard,’ said Falger. ‘And it is a long road through the Run. And we will need the Narens to guide us, give us food.’ Falger’s expression became forlorn. ‘Do not get too hopeful, Dyana. We will make it to Ackle-Nye. More than that . . . who knows?’
‘I know,’ said Dyana. ‘We will make it to Nar. I swear it. I will get there if it kills me.’
Falger laughed. ‘Oh, yes? Better to die in the Run than here in Lucel-Lor, eh?’
‘Better to die free than be Tharn’s wife,’ corrected Dyana.
‘He will not find you now, Dyana,’ Falger assured her. ‘We are too far from Dring for that. Even Voris will not send warriors looking for you now.’ He looked up into the darkening sky and smiled. ‘We are all safe here.’
Safe. It was a wonderful word, but Dyana couldn’t believe it. The night he killed her father, Tharn had made it clear she would never be safe again. He was obsessed with her, he always had been. They had both come from prominent families, and the union had seemed the perfect pairing to their misguided parents. Now she could scarcely remember the man he had been, the Tharn that he was before the call of the Drol. He had been kind once. If her memory wasn’t wrong, he might have even been shy. She laughed silently to herself. It was hard to reconcile those memories with the revolutionary.
‘There is no safety from Tharn,’ said Dyana bleakly. ‘And I do not like being driven from my home.’
‘Nor I,’ said Falger indignantly. ‘But show me a choice. Tharn will win this whole thing soon enough, and there will be no place for us who are not Drol. Once Kronin falls, the rest of us are dead. We must leave.’
‘I know,’ said Dyana. ‘But would it not be better to go with our heads high, and not as rats? Would it not be so much better?’
Falger fell silent, and Dyana quickly regretted her words. She could see the hurt on the older man’s face, and knew she had insulted him.
‘Sorry,’ she offered. ‘That was wrong of me to say. We are not rats.’
‘But we are running,’ admitted Falger. ‘That bastard Tharn has beaten us.’
‘Oh, no. He will never beat us, Falger. Not while we live and escape him. Once we get to Nar, we will have beaten Tharn.’
A boy splashed out of the river and fell to his knees in front of them, panting and giggling. ‘I can beat Tharn,’ he declared proudly. ‘I can fight!’
‘Can you?’ said Falger. ‘Well, all right then. Let us get you a jiiktar and send you off!’
‘Yes!’ cried the boy excitedly. ‘Dyana, I can beat him.’
Dyana smiled ruefully. ‘You stay here and protect us, Luken. You can fight him off if he comes.’
‘I will,’ said the boy adamantly. ‘I wish he would
come. I am not afraid.’
None of the boys claimed fear. They all clambered out of the river, wringing the water from their clothes and declaring their defiance of Tharn. The girls came ashore, too, sitting down with Dyana and Falger and giggling at the boys’ boasts.
‘Tell us more about him, Dyana,’ urged Luken. ‘Tell us again what he is like.’
Dyana laughed. ‘It was a long time ago, Luken.’
‘Is he ugly?’
‘Is he fat?’
Dyana started to answer, but a little girl whose name she didn’t know plopped down next to her and asked the most disquieting question.
‘Why does he hate us?’
And no one asked another thing. They just stared at Dyana, waiting for her sage response, and Dyana found herself at a loss.
‘I don’t know,’ she said sadly. She took the little girl’s hand and pulled her closer, hugging her wet body and not minding the soaking at all. ‘Maybe it is not really hate,’ she said. ‘Maybe it is like what happened in the Agar Forest. You all know that story, right?’
The children were wide-eyed.
‘No? None of you knows what happened in the Agar Forest? Luken, you do not know?’
She could tell Luken wanted to lie, but instead he simply frowned.
‘Well then, let me tell you. There are giant birch trees in the forest, you all know that. But the story of how they got so tall, that is the good part.’ Dyana’s tone took on drama. ‘This was a long time ago, long before any of us were born.’
‘Before Falger was born?’ asked one of the boys.
They all chuckled. ‘Well?’ Falger kidded. ‘Was it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Dyana. ‘It was much longer ago than that. This was before Voris and the Drol, before everything. This was when there was nothing but trees in the forest, no animals, no people, nothing. Just the birch trees, and the redwoods.’
Luken wrinkled his nose. ‘Redwoods? There are no redwoods in Agar.’
‘Right,’ said Dyana. ‘Not anymore. Because they lost their war with the birches. Trees can fight, did you know that? Well, that is what they used to do. They used to fight, talk, everything just like people. Only they did not get along with the redwoods, because the redwoods were cruel to them. Just like the Drol are to us.’
‘What happened?’ asked the girl in Dyana’s lap.
‘You all know how tall a redwood is. Really, really tall.’ Dyana raised her hands and knitted her fingers together. ‘So tall they block out the sun. There were thousands of them in Agar, too, so many that the poor birch trees had no light! They were in the dark, because the redwoods were selfish, and wanted all the sunlight for themselves. And when the birch trees complained, the redwoods got angry. They told the birches that they were the most powerful of all trees, that the gods had made them that way and that the gods liked them best.’
‘Like the Drol!’ Luken echoed.
‘Exactly. But those birch trees were tough, like us. They would not let the redwoods suffocate them, so they fought back. Even though the redwoods were taller and stronger, the little birch trees got together and decided to make their roots go even deeper into the earth. Well, the redwoods were so tall and proud they did not even bother looking to see what the little birches were doing. And the birch trees dug deeper and deeper, until their roots were stronger than the redwood roots, and they took all the water from the ground, and did not let the redwoods have any.’
Dyana paused and looked at the children.
‘Then what?’ pressed Luken.
‘Then?’ Dyana shrugged. ‘Do you see any more redwoods in Agar?’
All the children laughed, and even Falger gave a chuckle. Dyana laughed, too, recalling the time her father had told her that story. She had been about Luken’s age then, and Voris and Kronin had already been at war over the Agar for years. But that wasn’t the moral of her tale.
‘You see?’ she asked them all. ‘Those birch trees are like us. They were small, but now look at them. They are tall and strong, and they did not give in to the redwoods. And we will not give in to the Drol. We are leaving now, but we will return someday to take back what is ours.’
The children loved this, and so did the mothers who had overheard Dyana’s story. Falger’s smile was wide and proud, and he slipped a hand into Dyana’s and gave it a thankful squeeze. Dyana smiled. After months of being a shadow, it was good to suddenly be a light.
They all ate sparingly that night, picking up Falger’s lead, and eventually retired to their own corners of the camp, to talk around fires or just to sleep and ready their bodies for the next day’s march. Dyana always slept alone, not too far from Falger, not too close to the other men. She still preferred her solitude. The quiet coolness of night always calmed her, and she enjoyed the music of the river while the others slept. Tonight the moon was full. It was very late, yet despite her exhaustion Dyana found sleep impossible. Soon they would arrive in Ackle-Nye, and the excitement of it rippled through her, setting her imagination aflame. There would be Narens there. Her father had trusted the Narens. Soon she might be free.
Dyana sat up and looked around. Nearby, Falger was asleep, his blanket tangled around his body. A fire crackled at the riverside, waning in the moonlight and sending up smoldering wisps. Crickets chirped and the river babbled over the rocks, and all at once a great feeling of melancholy seized Dyana. This was still her home, no matter what she found in Ackle-Nye. She would miss this land. Unable to sleep, she slipped on her boots and tiptoed away from the camp, following the river in the moonlight until she could barely see the campfires. She found a rock on the bank and sat down on it, dipping her hand into the muddy earth and fishing up a collection of stones. One by one she pitched them into the moving water, listening to their splashes, and when she finished each handful she gathered another and did the same. It was a pleasant sound, regular and therapeutic, and Dyana lost herself in the simple act.
‘Dyana . . .’
Dyana jumped at the call of her name, springing from the rock and turning to look behind her. For a moment she thought she saw the smoke of the campfire hanging in the air before her, but then she realized it was not smoke at all, but a shimmering aerial figure, half there and half not, its body a loose vapor, its torso false and legless. Dyana gasped and backed away. The thing drifted toward her.
‘I have found you,’ said the apparition. ‘I told you I would.’
It was a purple mist, a shroud of murkiness shaped like a man. Dyana stared at it, and knew in a dread-filled instant what it was.
‘Tharn...’
‘It has been many years, girl. I am pleased you recognize me.’
‘Tharn,’ she whispered, gesturing at him. ‘What are you?’
He smiled at her. He did not seem evil at all, only vastly pleased with himself. ‘Look at me,’ he said, brushing his vaporous hands over his body. ‘I am the touch of heaven. I am what I wanted to be.’
Appalled, Dyana moved in closer, not hiding her disgust. ‘Tharn, what is this magic? What have you done?’
‘I have done what I am meant to do, what heaven has chosen me to do.’
Dyana stared at him and through him. He had left his family to find the science of Nar, then later to search for truth among the Drol. He had become a cunning-man and a revolutionary. But this, his latest incarnation, this astounded her. This was incomprehensible.
‘But is this you?’
‘This is me and not me. This is my mind without a body. I cannot explain it, Dyana. It is just . . .’ The ghost shrugged. ‘Me.’
‘But why?’ she pressed. ‘What are you?’
‘No questions,’ flared Tharn, his body breaking for a moment in his anger. ‘I have no answers. I am the sword of Lorris. I am his herald. Just as I told you I would be.’
Dyana looked at him sadly. ‘You are mad. And now you play with these arts, and make a monster of yourself. Tharn, you are...’
‘I know what I am!’ roared the ghost. His image swelled. ‘I am tou
ched by heaven! I have searched for this all my life, and now I have found it. And I will not be called mad by heretics like you! Can you look at me and say that I am wrong about the gods?’
Dyana didn’t answer.
‘Can you?’
‘I cannot,’ she admitted. ‘But you were not this way always, Tharn. You were not always a killer. I remember what you used to be. I remember you when you were kind.’
A veil of sadness fell over the ghost. ‘I am still kind, girl.’
‘No,’ Dyana argued. ‘You are not. You have harmed countless people for your cause. You claim you are Drol, and now you break their highest rule. Touched by heaven, you say? Is it not your way to use these gifts for peace?’
‘It is,’ Tharn admitted. ‘Or so I always thought.’
‘Then why do you kill? Why all this brutality?’
‘It is what Lorris wishes, I think. Dyana, I am not such a villain. I have reasons for this bloody work, things that are beyond you, beyond even me. I have prayed mightily for answers, and I am trusting Lorris to guide me. It is the will of heaven. In time you will see the right in it.’
‘I will not,’ Dyana insisted. ‘Because I will be gone. Where I am going, even you cannot follow.’
Tharn shook his head. ‘I have come to warn you, Dyana. I have almost won this wretched war. When I am done, I am coming for you. You will not resist me.’
‘Resist you?’ Dyana laughed. ‘I spit on you! I am no man’s slave.’
‘You are my betrothed. Your father’s word binds you. And I am laying claim to you.’
‘Your laws mean nothing to me, Drol. Or the bargain of our parents. You were not Drol when we were young. My father would never have promised me to you if he knew the devil you were becoming. I am a free woman.’
